A March and a tie

While driving for the Porsche factory in endurance racing, Jo Siffert pursued his Formula One career. In 1970, Porsche bankrolled Siffert’s seat in a March Engineering F1 car, since the German company did not wish to lose one of their lead drivers to rival Ferrari.

Picture above: Jo Siffert, in the March factory with co-founder, engineer Robin Herd, fine tuning his seating position in one of the March’s 701 chassis. You will notice that “Seppi” is not in his racing overall, but wearing a shirt and a tie!

It was a bad 1970 F1 season for the fast Swiss driver, who scored a few top 10 finishes, but no championship points (picture below). His best result being a seventh place finish at Spa-Francorchamps (picture below). He was then relieved to join for the 1971 season at BRM, the one who was his Porsche team mate in endurance, Pedro Rodriguez.